John
Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of the Torrey
Honors Institute, and Associate Professor of Philosophy,
at Biola University.

Sad
Mr. Stein
The
LA Times pays people to say they do not support our troops...[John Mark Reynolds] 1/26/05

Mr. Joel
Stein has every
right to his opinion. Some of my students are putting their
bodies on the line in Iraq to defend that right. This is not
about Mr. Stein's right to express his opinion, but about my
right to disagree strongly and to refuse to support the institution
that pays him and gives him space. Mr. Stein is not likely
to give this blog a tip in the old Amazon tip jar (even if
it were easier to find on this site). In the same way, I don't
have to support Mr. Stein's opinion and nobody has a right
to be printed in the LA Times.

But if you
live in the real world, like most of us, you may be unaware
that the paper of record on the West coast has given Mr. Stein
its editorial page, a high prestige place, to say he does not
support our troops, to suggest that they are dopes or dupes,
and to suggest, in all humility, that he is better than they.

His piece
is a bit of juvenilia really, not yet graduated to the full
blown bitter hatred of the left in America. The libertine left
is unable to produce culture so irony, sarcasm, and the inside
joke are all they have left. Everything is written tongue in
cheek like this article so they can smirk at blogs like this
that take things too seriously. It is easy to recognize the
conceit of the freshman honors students. . . though Mr. Stein
is a little long in the tooth for such hi-jinks, it is hard
to be very mad at his sad little essay. Until you remember
9/11. And the students who volunteered, honor diploma's in
hand, to fight. Colin. Jon. And you think that perhaps that
snobbery is misplaced.

Mr. Stein
does not know Colin Anderson. He did not sit in Plato session
with him. He did not hear him express his love of country over
Locke. I did and so it is harder to smirk with Mr. Stein about
his lack of respect for Colin. . . a man who chose to fight
for his country, but whose thoughtful sacrifice Stein compares
to stupidly clicking on a pop up ad. The man who has put himself
in harm's way to bring liberty to a whole people is sneered
at as a thoughtless buffoon and God help me, I find it hard
to laugh in the knowing way Mr. Stein expects.

It is tempting
to grow angry in a good old fashioned way and say that this
columnist is a soft, cowardly, elitist whose convenient pacifism
allows him to live parasitically on the sacrifice of others.
But anger is no longer understood on the left and so they would
only sneer. . . and I do not know enough about Mr. Stein to
know what is really like. And I would not soil a good insult
in that man's company.

It is shocking
to me that folks are shocked. If you are getting ready to send
your kids to UCLA or any big name school, this is what they
will be taught. If they go to grad school and support the President
in any way, they will be mocked. Mr. Stein has published material
so mild compared to what leftist blogs publish every day that
it is surprising that anyone can still be surprised. But the
blog literate amongst us forget that though exploding most
folk still do not read blogs or if they do still have an old
irrational prejudice in favor of old media. And many of those
folk do not realize the passion with which the Left hates the
majority of the country. They live in communities where it
is safer to believe in Wicca than in Jesus. They agonize over
whether to vote Green or support Howard Dean and they think
those outside of their little enclaves are stupid, immoral,
and bigots. They have not tolerance for you and blogs allow
the masks to slip.

Blogs expose
what people really think. One does not polish and rewrite.
My opinions are just out there. The profanity and the bile
will be there if that is who you are. Graciousness and mercy
will be there if that is who you are. The Old Left, often Christian
and deeply patriotic, may have been wrong, but you could find
civilized humans there. However, years of education in moral
relativism have done there work. The New Left is almost entirely
secular, libertine, and they hate anyone who gets in their
way. Don't get me wrong. The Right has haters and bigots and
folk who say irrational or stupid things. We have to denounce
our Pat Robertson types, but in the "intellectual" class
(no smarter by and large) the irrational and lunatic ravings
of the Daily Kos are taken seriously. Read this editorial and
then go to the Daily Kos (smart and honest about what it believes)
and prepare to realize that if you go to Mass this Sunday,
they don't like you. Oh occasionally someone will raise their
head and say they are religious and polite noises might (sometimes)
be made. . . especially when it looks like they need at least
one Southern state, but in the power corridors, they hate you,
hate traditional America, and hate our troops. They don't understand
how facile columns like Stein's strike most of us in the stomach.
They are blind to their own folly, because they believe and
say so much worse in private. The internet smokes them out
and the old media is now forced to print, to keep their position
at smart set parties, more and more extreme things. The LA
Times is now printing mild forms of what they see on the left-wing
blogs and hear at their own gatherings.

And most
of us are left out. How long before African-Americans and Hispanics
realize that they are being used by people who do not love
or understand the life of the poor? If once the exploited realize
they are being exploited (as my own poverty ridden state of
West Virginia is finally realizing), then the end will come,
because these are sad and isolated people. Most have never
held jobs or lived in areas where everyone did not agree with
them. They have been coddled ideologically in college and move
on to soft government or media jobs.

Yet when
the anger fades one remembers that this is one nation after
all. We must learn to love our secular brother. If we have
more votes, then we must govern in a way to give them the most
liberty that the nation can afford. If we can, then we must
continue to serve them with the blood and sweat of our finest
young men. We shall let them reap the benefits of a culture
built by our grandparents and theirs. . . which sadly they
have rejected. Somehow in the bitter words we must love the
person and the image of God in him while opposing with every
fiber of our being ideas that would destroy us all, including
Mr. Stein. CRO